“high level of formality”; while she detects some (Marschall, 2015, Bechtel, Jurgenson, 2013).
national preference for ritualized sentences, she The growing interest in the travel of displaced
concludes to the indication of a “globally shared and uprooted populations to a land of origin (or
memory” (Winter, 2015). Her analysis, among considered as such in individual or collective
others, show how tourists’ behaviors are socially memories), in a context of widespread mobility and
shaped by codes of conduct and norms on these circulation, is manifested by the development of
particular spaces, and suppose all kinds of ritualized categories such as “memory tourism”, “homesick
and inherited practices (flowers, object repositories, tourism” or “roots tourism”. Bechtel and Jurgenson
photographs…). point out that “memory tourism” concerns «places
Lately, many studies have been looking at
with which one maintains a strong personal
the bodily dimension of the touristic experience biographical relationship, these places are also those
(bodily memories, multisensory dimensions) of past suffering, loss, or oppression experienced
studying the “performed” ritualized gestures, personally or by members of the group to which
such as walks, prostrations, silence, while others one belongs» (Bechtel, Jurgenson, 2013). Sabine
focus more on the emotional complexities involved Marschall suggests designating “homesick tourists”,
in these touristic experiences (Chevalier, Lefort, «survivors and their immediate descendants
2016, Truc, 2015). They suggest that places of who travel to places that were once their home,
memory are «tourist destinations are seen as settlements from which they were forcibly removed
nodes of reiterated performative acts». They are through political forces, natural or human-made
interested in traces and narratives produced by disasters and which are often damaged or even
visitors touring places of violence and suffering, in completely erased». She differentiates “homesick
order to understand the role of these visits in their tourism” from “roots tourism” which «involves
personal transformations, and the construction of travellers who are removed by several generations
their familial, personal or even national identity and from the ancestors whose traces they search.
sense of belonging. «The journey and its practices Homesick tourists are those who have experienced
of remembering play an important role in affirming the migration and hold direct personal memories»
and shaping the emptiness sense of identity. Study (Marschall, 2015). As Marie-Blanche Fourcade points
what effects journeys may have on emptiness lives, out, «many groups have suffered the vicissitudes
how memories are shared with other participants or of uprooting throughout history, both for economic
family; how journey may foster introspection and reasons (famines, crises, slavery) and political
induce a self-change, a transformed sense of identity reasons (dictatorships, wars, ethnic cleansing) and
through the experience of authenticity which allows are gradually trying to weave or reweave the links
the narratives of identity to be told» (Marschall, that unite them to these abandoned territories. Root
2015). tourism is a symbolic return practice that establishes
There is an abundant literature on the travels
or restores concrete links, through the travel
of survivors or witnesses to places of destruction experience, with origins chosen because of their
or traumatic events: Deported Jews visiting their family or cultural nature» (Fourcade, 2010).
former villages or camps in Central and Eastern
Root tourism is defined by researchers as a set
Europe, witnesses or descendants of victims of of practices motivated by the desire to «go to see,
terrorist attacks (Sturken, 2007), survivors of soak up, confront one’s imagination with reality,
tropical storm Katrina return to see the remnant find the traces of life before told by a parent”, among
of their home (Thomas, 2009), veterans visiting “tourists uprooted from their ancestral land [who]
battlefields, Palestinians in exile visiting ruins take the road in search of their past» (Fourcade,
of their destroyed villages, Germans visiting 2010).
former homelands in Central and Eastern Europe
14
Observing Memories
ISSUE 3
Travellers and visitors actively and constantly